Class issues central to real changeChecking the parties’ green credentials |
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Derek Wall |
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During the Green Party Conference Nick Hildyard leaned over to me and said ‘The problem with Zac Goldsmith and John Selwyn Gummer is that they lack a class analysis’. This cracked me up – the comedian and campaigner Mark Thomas is on record as claiming that Nick is the poshest person he has ever meet and he has an impeccable old Etonian accent. Posh or not, Nick stated the obvious about the Tory and indeed Liberal Democrat attempt to deal with climate change. Both the Lib Dems and the Tories have produced substantial documents full of policy promises that ignore the central issues: class and capitalism. It is possible to critique the Tory green document on the basis that it is merely a policy discussion document; any voter friendly headline grabbing policies will be cherry picked by Cameron and moves such as a moratorium of airport expansion will be vetoed. Indeed, it seems that the document only puts forward suggestions for a discussion of flights rather than a cast iron halt to Heathrow expansion. The Liberal Democrats look good on paper too, but have, with a few exceptions such as the push by Woking Council towards carbon cuts, been poor in action. Liberal Democrats supported motorway construction in Scotland, and the building of major new roads in the 1990s around Bath and Newbury despite huge protests. They continue to advocate neo-liberal globalisation with a Shadow Chancellor, Vincent Cable, who used to be chief economist for an oil corporation. Liberal Democrat and Tory attempts to deal with the environmental crises ignore the root cause of destruction, capitalism, with its built in imperative to perpetual growth and waste. Reforms that slow climate change are essential but the danger is that a long and even detailed list of policy reforms fail to grasp the nettle that capitalism is incompatible with sustainability. Without a class analysis, attempts to deal with environmental problems will let corporations off the hook and put the pressure on the mass of humanity. Biofuelled Lear Jets may be some way off but the market based solutions of carbon trading mean the rich and the powerful can buy the right to keep on polluting. The whole Kyoto framework has produced huge city bonuses for those who trade carbon cutting financial instruments. Fraud and corporate lobbying mean that Kyoto has failed to halt emissions; in Europe, the corporate carbon allowances are larger than the CO2 that is being generated at present. The Liberal Democrat push for biofuels says it all. Yes, it is a vital goal to go for a petrol free economy – and a difficult one. However, at present the bulk of biofuels come from energy crops such as palm oil, grown in plantations from land stolen from local people by enclosure. Biofuels have been identified as the fastest growing threat to rainforests. Making biofuels from waste products, a huge expansion of public transport and cycling together with the preservation of local hospitals, schools, shops and other services under threat would be ways of moving from oil addiction without throwing people in the Global South off their land. The most basic awareness of class means that we have to recognise that even the best policies can be captured for the benefit of a minority. Green politics is irrelevant unless it takes the issue of power and especially economic power seriously Nick Hildyard is a particularly interesting figure with a long track record of challenging capitalism, both theoretical and practically. He was sacked by Zac Goldsmith as Editor of the Ecologist after he had criticised the Malthusian myth of over population; he was centrally involved in putting together ‘Whose Common Future’, a critique of both state and market based solutions to ecological problems. In its celebration of the commons and its opposition to enclosure, it is essential reading for ecosocialists, along with John Bellemy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology and Lowy and Kovel’s Ecosocialist Manifesto. The Corner House, a green think tank, has taken on the New Labour government over the BA Saudi bribery scandal and have been main movers against the carbon offset con. Take a look at www.thecornerhouse.org.uk. Derek Wall is Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales. He blogs at http://another-greenworld.blogspot.com and his keynote Green Party Conference speech on Ecology and Power is on you tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6qkn81CPzQ |
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